Which lightweight Linux...

[tarmiricmi]

Hi,
I wanna install as a 2nd boot Linux that should be lightweight in terms of space used. The distro should be in continous development, should include features for the Linux beginner (basic media codecs installed for instance), should have elementary drivers support (say for the Thinkpad) and around 10 Gb when installed (in terms of CPU and RAM, it doesn't have to be light as my machine is good enough to run modern OS, just my SSD is lacking on space).

What do you guys recommend?

 

[zzhld]

Lubuntu is the obvious answer. It just works out of the box, and the default interface is very simple to adapt to for a Windows user.

If you want to try Linux with as little trouble as possible, go with Lubuntu and chose the latest LTS version. 18.04 LTS was recently released and I haven't tried it yet, but it is probably good. I'm still on 16.04 LTS which is ok.

I suggest the super light weight Lubuntu over of a fancier looking Linux desktop like whatever the latest Ubuntu is, not because of lightness but because it is the least dysfunctional of the Debian based desktops distros imho. On Linux, you just have to accept that 99% of all Open Source Software is poorly designed and doesn't really work very well, and learn to appreciate 1% that actually works and stick with those. Lubuntu is pretty conservative and tends to have done a lot of that vetting already, in my experience. The fact that they aim for minimalism means that the software projects it relies on tends to be smaller and have lower aims, which means there's less to screw up.

 

[Grobe]

To continue answering OP: Just go with an Ubuntu derivative should be ok. I cannot give yo an long list of distros, but just to mention: most distros is likely to work on your laptop. My personal favourite light distros (haven't tried them all, so there is certainly other that is great as well) is Linux Lite, Bodhi, Peppermint, Mint Xfce.
Whatever distro you want to try out, do a test with a live-cd first so you get an idea of what it's desktop environoment feels like.

If reading distrowatch, a thumb of rule is most distros at top is in current development - but be aware that web site use a very poor sort method to define what sticks out to be popular distros.

One distro I recomend (say you don't have to got the lightest possible one) is Ubuntu Mate. Feels very mature and should be lighter than standard Ubuntu distro.

 

[Alabalcho]

I wish there was an option in the Forum to completely ignore some users...